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| Rosie, my Editor |
Then two years later, in an online Certified Life Coaching course when I needed to have a website to complete my requirements for graduation, I remembered Megan’s words. Learning that a blog would be accepted, I emailed her, and she became my coach, my blog designer . . . really my blog master.
By March 2012, I had completed six stories and sent them to her thinking that I now had six weeks to write more. To my horror, she published all of them on the opening date explaining calmly, “There needs to be ‘a body of writing’ to catch readers’ interest.” I now got busy. When a friend, herself an editor, read my stories, she quickly emailed, telling me that I needed an editor. I trusted her view. Her words were the first step on a journey of my continuously expanding effort at writing for publication.
I turned to a writer I had known while attending writing workshops, and within a few days, I heard back from Ani Tuzman.* She knew an excellent editor and had shared with her the sample writing I had sent. While waiting to hear, I had awakened one morning at three and seen a vision of a red rose floating above me; I knew it was a sign. Only hours later, Ani’s news arrived that Rosie Pearson had described editing my work as “polishing fine china” and would be glad to be my editor.
Six years later, Rosie is the editor not only of “Purely Prema” but also of A Flower for God, a long awaited publication due out in 2018 that tells of my unusual and light-filled spiritual awakening and journey to God. Over these years, Rosie and I have built a relationship of compassion, confidence, competency, and cooperation seaming together our different responsibilities. As I began writing in her warmth of full support, I was also learning the ins and outs of a new computer as well as a new-to-me computer–based editing program through which we communicated regularly. I definitely felt my frustrations with the technology, yet our successful relationship across a hemisphere was a miracle I could feel sustaining and encouraging me.
At the three-year mark, I had written her of something that I found unusual between us: we had a deeply enjoyable personal correspondence apart from our editing work. Her return email had brought a quick smile for her words were—“pure Rosie.” Her clients, she wrote, became her friends, and her friends often became her clients, and this is what had happened.
She has an ability to know who I am when I am not clear in my writing of who I am. This allows her to guide me, as needed, to the stage of rewriting in which each time I have reached an “aha” moment of self-awareness as I’ve freed an aspect of myself formerly blocked. The revelations are what make my writing true memoir rather that autobiographical writing for they are pivot points to new direction.
Before meeting Rosie, I had for years wondered about the praise authors lavished on their editors, holding them in bountiful gratitude. That mystery is resolved and revealed in my, “Thank you, awesome Rosie!”
My realization is, “An ability to surrender to others’ views of us may bridge us to fresh accomplishments in the presence of unflagging support.”
*Read more about Rosie at www.entertheflow.net and www.editorrosie.net
* Read more about Ani at http://anituzman.com/